Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from May, 2013

The Drums of War

War Decs have been sent out. For the first time since I started playing I am not worried. I am not fretting. I'm not uncomfortable. I am also interested, for once, in the targets of the decs. War Decs have been a touchy subject for me in Eve. I understand why so many people like meaningless decs that seem to be nothing more than a paid for hall pass to PvP in high sec. I have never cared for them. However, this time, I have interest. Molden Heath has become home to several new, large entities. They seem to fly with each other or at least they have created social groups between themselves. The other side of the loop is full of blobs. Large fleets of people where not everyone has low security status. This makes any fight with them a matter of not only having to deal with larger fleets but also having to deal with gateguns and station guns. They will hug stations or camp stations and do their best to maneuver fights into gates because the gateguns give them an advantage. I can

Testing Odyssey: Now to Wait

I've spent a lot of time playing with the Odyssey expansion. This is the most time I have put into the test server and the most time I have put into trying to 'help' Eve on the level of presenting input with features. I find it funny that my most anticipated feature, the one that I thought I would spend the most time agonizing over, Tags4Sec is the one that caused the least worry. I played with it, focused on a few points but in general ran it past the people who are interested, we gave it our group blessing and now we can only wait to see how the tags themselves determinate into the game. I know several people in holding patterns waiting for it. They are to tired to drag their sec up anymore and floating on the edge of burn out with this a bright hope in the future. Having found myself descending into snarky attacks and irritation on the forums and with the expansion just under five days away, I guess I'm done. I've lost my ability to keep my posts positive and

Ramblings: Reimaging High Sec

[ TL;DR: Sugar ponders the concept of High Sec ] I started working on this idea during Fanfest when CCP Soundwave said, during his presentation, that he wanted to support people who wanted to live in high sec because that is the game that they wanted to play as much as any other area. I wrote for a bit and shoved it aside because it was to  controversial  feeling to me. But, today, after I read that the spawned containers from the new exploration mechanics will carry over the normal Crimewatch system, I decided to finish up the thought some. It was the post that helped spur me to debate Ripping off the Rails to allow Low Sec a greater definition as well. If the previous progression bar of high sec to low sec to null sec and/or wormholes is to vanish then the acceptance of high sec as something other then a newbie area has to start if all areas of the game are to  become a functionally, integrated environment. Eve is very much a little world. It becomes more and more so as it ag

TCS: For Want of Hulls

With the changes that have come to Molden Heath and the deluge of new residents into the area, sales at my store have changed and stressed my buying habits. The lease of my Jump Freighter could not have come at a better time. I am finding myself hard pressed to keep up and balance what I need to add or expand upon. A moment about my life. I know that most will assume I do not have one. However, sometimes  I open the cellar door and climb from the basement into the light (although I prefer darkness being my natural habitat). I'm a daily Eve player, but I am not able to play many hours each day due to my work schedule. I work 12 hour days and on the days that I work back to back I have a 4 hour window between getting home from work (if I am on time) and going to bed. On those days I cram the store in. What I have started to do is I buy items on one day and I move them or ship them down. This allows me to post them the next day during my next block of time. It keeps me only a day or

As I Lay Down my ISK

I was speaking with someone who has been away from the game for the last six or so months. He was wondering if he could come to THC2. We had a chat about that and as we discussed ships I told him that one of the most basic necessities would be skills to fly a cruiser and the ability to T2 shield or T2 armor tank said cruiser with guns right behind it. "I thought pirates were more into frigates?" I blinked at that. My own personal taste in frigates has been hard to indulge in low sec. Of the 831 things on my killboard 285 have been killed in frigates. 8 of those kills have been with a T1 frigate (Rifter) 8 with a T1 frigate (Incursus during a fleet of Incursi) and the rest have been with T2 frigates/Interceptors. Most of those kills have happened post Retribution now that frigates are able to mitigate gategun and station gun damage. This is all because Molden Heath is not faction warfare based low security space and the group that I flew with, until Retribution, were a bat

Odyssey Testing - Much Improvements to Relic and Data Sites

I'm still Testing Odyssey. I think that our cries are being heard in pieces if not the entire thing people may want. Free Q&A  is a bitter point that pops up on the forums, often when the players massed words are being ignored by CCP. I know that we are providing a lot of feed back for CCP. I'm doing it in a hope to be heard on at least some of the issues that pop up. Even if it is just fixing the sites so that I do not rage out again over the sloppy insertion of objects. Even if CCP hired Q and A people to do what we do those people wouldn't play Eve to understand the fundamental broken aspect of things. Note: There are no longer gate fire animations. The gates just stay the same and people appear in the system. This seems bad to me. I commented on it in some feedback thread somewhere. I posted on twitter as well and was asked to submit a bug report .

Rambling: Rip Out the Rails

[ TL:DR: Sugar muses on the out dated defines of low security space. ] Last year I wrote a post called In Defense of Low Sec where I floated out my idea that Low Sec couldn’t be fixed and improved until it was defined better. I didn’t have any defines for it I just had a concept that trying to fix it in the middle instead of at the start would not do anything but create another random wave of imbalance. And imbalance is worse than a lack of improvement to me. Of late, as I’ve now spent the past year and a half (with plans to stay where I am) in low sec I’ve been able to experience other people’s trials and tribulations, successes and failures in low sec space. I’ve watched various issues pop up again and again and I too have lamented at what seems to be the neglect of low sec space. However, reading up on the threads about the new hacking game and the changes to the loot tables for Odyssey I had something click a bit. Right now, it seems that CCP has listened to our screams of

Situational Preception

"How is Teon these days?" "Oh its fine. Just some ganking of Mackinaws and Orcas in the belts going on." "Then its not fine, is it?" "Oh? I guess not?" My view point. Oh, how my view point is not what it once was. Maybe it was when I was positioning my Procurer in as a warp in for an Orca gank. Perhaps it was the wormhole corp theft. I'm sure it was longer ago than either of those two events. How steep the hill of opinion has become. Without thinking, in an idle response to a question, I did not even see my own answer as abnormal. The amusing part is that I find the Jita undock to be a place of terrible, brutal violence.  It makes me shake my head as I warp off to my insta-undock over the violence issues in high sec. The flood of duels and warp disruptors and scramblers flood the screen. Ships explode everywhere and it is a scene of chaos at all times. How can anyone live in that environment, comfortably? I often wonder as I trundle

Falling Immortal

My name is Seraph. It is not the name that I was born with. I doubt it is a name that I would have given myself. It is a name that was given to me. I was named my first day. As the doors opened on the drop ship and I found myself standing on the edge with the wind a vicious shrieking swirl around me. I was told that I looked up to the sky and spread my arms as I leap into the air and shot towards the ground like the hand of vengeance with the after effects of an orbital strike echoing my passage. It sounds poetic, doesn't it? It did to me when my squad leader named me. It does each time I look up for one instance before I look down. Down to the battle and fight below. This time above the sky is a dark sheet. There are no stars out. A thick cloud cover mutes the light. Yet, I know, beyond it are the stars. Across the liquid depths ships streak through the night. They are more Seraphim than I. With that thought I launch into the air. Graceful. Powerful. Flight is mine

Fiction Friday?

I keep seeing Draken at Sand, Cider and Spaceships , do fiction Fridays. As a follower, with little individualism  I've felt that I'm left out of a loop I didn't know existed. I decided I would have my own Fiction Friday and here it is! Actually, most of it is BS other than wanting to do Fiction Friday because it sounds cool. The idea came to me during the presentation of the Origins Trailer at Fanfest. While some found it well done but uninspiring my mind was burning with imagery, ideas, possibilities, futures, characters, and events. Today, I hide behind a shield of 'interpretation'. This story is a bit different. It's based in the Eve world but not Eve Online. Instead, today I tap into Dust 514. Falling Immortal  is my interpretation of playing Dust 514. I like military books a lot, wars, ground fighting, armor, cyborgs, solders  Dust inspires that for me int he world of Eve. Instead of spaceships I have the nitty-gritty heat of the fight. The dust

Odyssey - Disliking Relic and Data Sites

I wound up having a somewhat bad morning in Eve where I forgot what I was doing and lost a ship and some boosters because of it. Trying to do to many things at once was not the best idea I had this morning. I next found myself having issues with Eve Mentat pulling my corporation sell orders. Tired, I decided to go back to the test server to see some of the changes and try out the new scanning game. First: The new launcher deployment I'm getting used to. I keep logging myself out because I am used to hitting the PLAY button and after that, logging in. I'm somehow with it. I also don't care for the new position of the server numbers or maybe it is how it is laid out. I think the server population county should have its own color so that it stands out against the rest of the text. However, due to the extended downtime CCP is saying sorry and giving out free skillpoints . "During tomorrow's downtime we will add 50.000 skillpoints (representing roughly a day’s wor

TCS: Pushing Prices

When I started Eve, I had no intent to get into the market. The market, as the complex economical system that it is, was not a blip on my Radar. I had the sense to go to another station if I saw a cheaper price and I learned to move items to buy orders for better prices but I was not and never though that I would be as into the market as I have become in the course of this new adventure. I don't think that I'm a market guru. My basic situation is simple. I buy it at one location and list it higher at the next. Yet, I've gone from a simple plan of having some stuff to a market that gaining momentum as people are drawn to it. Listing items today, I noticed something that I'd started to see a few weeks ago. Now I am seeing it across a broad spectrum of the market around me. The people of high sec have started to under cut me by .01 ISK.  I am over joyed. I never promised that I would be the lowest price in the region. I cannot do that. Nor, do I feel that

Denial of Service

[20:32:38] Virtueorvice > Kill: Bilasyn Bongarest Aideron (Cormorant) no orbital strike for you Vov so neatly sums up one of the parts Planetary Conquest. With the groups that are coming in and out of the area our tactics have changed a lot. A lot of PvP often turns into an ISK war. The most expensive ships are taken down first. Even if an entire fleet is lost, if the ISK lost is less then the ISK gained it is often considered a win. It is why expensive ships are used for bait and the bait takers try to kill it and go before the baiters arrive. ISK is dangled as a lure and the culture has grown up around it. But, time is also a factor. There is a limited amount of time on grid to make decisions. If one wraps themselves up on displayable statistics, such as ISK efficiency they limit targets. However, if one moves beyond that simple measuring stick the possibilities become much, much more interesting. Orbital Bombardment ammunition appears to be, so far, small ammunition.

I be Jumping

Unexpectedly , I find myself in possession of 3 jump capable ships (4 counting the Sin) and a total of five capital class ships. The Orca counts (technically) as a capital ship. It is the baby capital. The Charon is also one too! They require capital ship construction to build. Beyond that, I have Snowflake, my Thanatos who I can fly (if not that well yet) and use for a suitcase. There is my new Chimeria (not yet named), who Kenrin was kind enough to rig up for me before Odyssey hit and my rig cost went from something reasonable to 3 times the cost of the ship. I now have a leased Jump Freighter which will improve my life and give me a new level of stress at the same time. However TCS will now be stocking more, larger hulls. Capital ships have an amazing ability. That is their jump drive. That drive allows them to cross vast amounts of space in a few breaths. It is what allows Pandemic Legion to hot drop your cruiser gang from their staging system. It is also what makes  cynosural